Online via Zoom, 11:00 am to 12:30 pm
Presenter: Deoksoon Kim

Digital stories are brief multimedia products that combine text, video, images, voiceover, and audio. We explore the potential that digital stories have for allowing educators an avenue to express emotions, reflect on their own learning and teaching, and develop their voices and identities. Some educators who use digital storytelling describe their artistic talents as a “language.” This interesting metaphor reveals something about the power of digital stories for teachers. In this lecture, we analyze two examples that illustrate how educators use digital stories to convey an emotional journey and how narration of the challenges that educators encounter can strengthen their professional identities. We reveal how digital storytelling can be particularly powerful for educators, and offer tips and strategies for creating these products.

Online via Zoom, 11:00 am to 12:30 pm
Presenter: Geoffrey Sanzenbacher

A common refrain among retirement researchers is that longer careers are the best way to ensure an adequate retirement. This refrain is often directed at the workers themselves – “you need to work longer!” And that message seems to have been getting through. Since the 1990s, the labor force participation rates of older individuals have increased. But, workers are just one side of the market: the supply side. Their ability to work longer also depends on whether employers are willing to hire and retain them. The question is, what does employer demand for older workers look like today and in the future? This lecture synthesizes the results of several recent studies on the topic.

Online via Zoom, 11:00 am to 12:30 pm
Presenters: Riikka Pietiläinen Caffrey and Anna Wittstruck

In Fall 2023, the Boston College Music Department brought in two new conductors: Dr. Anna Wittstruck, who took the helm of the Boston College Symphony Orchestra, and Dr. Riikka Pietiläinen Caffrey, who directs the University Chorale and Chamber Singers. In their first year, these two faculty members began shaping their vision for the performing arts at BC, through repertoire and inclusive student-centered pedagogy, where historically excluded voices are an important part of the musical narrative. Together they will discuss the role musical ensembles play within formative education and in the lives of Boston College students, faculty, community members, and alumni. The conversation will include musical examples and videos of performances, as well as future plans for these ensembles and for all performing arts at BC.

Online via Zoom, 11:00 am to 12:30 pm
Presenter: Aziz Rana

Some Americans worry that the Federal Constitution is ill-equipped to respond to mounting democratic threats. Yet for as long as anyone can remember, the Constitution has occupied a quasi-mythical status in American political culture, which ties ideals of liberty and equality to assumptions about the inherent goodness of the text’s design. This lecture will explore how today's reverential constitutional culture emerged and argue that it is a distinctively twentieth-century phenomenon. It will also detail the profound impact of constitutional veneration on American life. Today, such veneration provides a valuable and unifying language of reform, but it also limits our ability to think creatively about institutional improvements.

Online via Zoom, 11:00 am to 12:30 pm
Presenter: Robert Savage (Visiting Professor at Venice International University, Fall 2024)

Professor Savage will draw from a course he is teaching in Venice on 1968, a very eventful year of the 1960s. Topics will include the ‘Tet offensive’ in Vietnam, an event that shocked the American public and signaled the beginning of the end for America’s war in Southeast Asia; the protest movements that developed in the U.S. that opposed the war and supported civil rights for all Americans; and, in Europe, the beginning of the Northern Ireland ‘Troubles’ and the ‘Prague Spring’ that crushed the hopes of people throughout Eastern Europe who were eager for an end to repressive communist regimes. In addition to turbulent politics, he will also discuss the emergence of an innovative form of popular music that helped define the decade.

Online via Zoom, 11:00 am to 12:30 pm
Presenter: Elizabeth Kensinger

Why is forgetting so common? Why can we be confident about a past event’s occurrence, yet wrong about its details? Why can we spend hours preparing for a meeting, yet be unable to retrieve the content? Why do we often forget someone's name almost as soon as they've told it to us? This talk will briefly explain the science behind these memory lapses and will discuss science-backed tips to help you remember better.